Training AI | Kevin Barrett's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Training AI’

A “Few” Words On Film Reviews

Posted in General Comments, tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, Copilot, Garbage In - Garbage Out, General Comments, Google, Microsoft, Training AI on January 5, 2026| 4 Comments »

When I started adding book and film reviews to my blog posts, there was a “somewhat” clear idea in my mind that there would be a difference between them. Book reviews would be lengthier because I would be providing “some” analysis. Film reviews were more: “action movie; I liked it” or not. As I widened my own blog reading, I noticed some folks were “really” into movies and gave in-depth information about plot, directors, actors, special effects, music scores, etc. Since I didn’t really think about films that way, I shied away from doing mine to that level.

Over time, I changed…

Viewing franchises, sequels, remakes and “collections” altered my consumption of film and I’ve gone from being a passive viewer seeking entertainment to a beginning critic. I don’t know if that’s a “good” thing or a “bad” thing. It just is what it is…

Anyway, a few years back I began adding more and more information to my film reviews: who’s in them, what drew me to the film, the plot, my opinion about the acting, my thoughts on the special effects (if any) and then – finally – did I like the film and would I recommend it to others.

Last year I found I was spending an increasing amount of time doing the drafts for my reviews. At the same time, I started using various Artificial Intelligence (AI) “tools” to help me draft my reviews. This was actually more intended to give me exposure to AI (as a retired “computer guy / programmer”) than to save time, but if a tool works, I’ll use it…

What I found was the two “best” were Google’s and Microsoft’s, but Google’s was very academic sounding and Microsoft’s (CoPilot) more closely matched my own writing style and voice. Basically, I would copy / paste two or three of my prior reviews into the AI and ask for an analysis of my “style, format and content”. I would then give it the title of a “new” (to me) film and ask it to draft a review. Neither tool started well, but CoPilot was slightly better in initial drafts. I would then make corrections and get a second or third draft. I then thought to use the other tool’s draft to feed into the AI tool to see what impact that had. After six weeks of using both, I settled on CoPilot. I have been using AI for all of “my” first drafts for the last couple of months.

Yes, the AI has made the generation of a first draft faster. But I have found the tool is not without issues – which take care to find and time to resolve. Yes, very occasionally, the tool will make stuff up from apparent whole cloth. This can be EXTREMELY difficult to edit because more often than not it is NOT whole cloth, but half truth wrapped in cloth. For example, if the film was based on a book, the film make have taken liberties with the character’s name or combined multiple written characters into one film character. This is an actual example I experienced as the character from the book was completely changed for the film. The AI didn’t “know” this and it wrote the review as if the character was the protagonist’s friend (from the novel), when actually he was the lead antagonist (in the film). If I hadn’t JUST finished watching the film, I might have missed this in the draft review and subsequently MY post would have been (garbage in,) garbage (out).

Bottom line: YOU have to be a better editor to use these tools “designed” to make you a faster writer!!

My second issue with AI is “AI creep”. The drafts slowly but surely begin to include words and phrases you (me anyway) would not use. In my case, simply because I tend to be a simple talker and therefore a simple writer, I don’t use “cinematic / artsy” language which doesn’t “mean” anything to anyone (me) not in the industry with years of experience.

I have allowed this to happen – one word / one phrase / one sentence – at a time, and now my reviews don’t sound like me at all. (Well, not very much like me… LoL)

So, now having spent weeks training the AI tool how to draft a film review “in my style”, I now have to go back and retrain the tool. The “kicker”?? It (the AI tool) says it understands my new requirements, but after a few days of use, the “AI creep” has re-started…

Oh, what tangled webs we weave… when we first try to use AI to improve our lives.

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Click here (5 January) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.